Board Game Review – Freedom: The Underground Railroad

Freedom: The Underground Railroad is a fun cooperative board game for 1 to 4 players.

The theme is very well done, dealing with a difficult subject carefully and gracefully, as well as offering the possibility to learn a thing or two, without forcing it. The components, overall, are great, with the disappointing exception of the cards. The game itself, at the core, is challenging and fun, but a bit convoluted around the margins.

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#1 – The Theme

Very obviously, the theme of Freedom: The Underground Railroad is a big part of the game’s appeal (or lack thereof, if it’s not for you). Freedom comes from a company – Academy Games – dedicated to historical, educational games.

Personally, I think the designers aren’t hitting players over the head with the theme. In theory, one would even be able to play it as an “abstract” game of moving the wooden cubes from A to B, with a bit of resource-management, etc.. . In theory.

In practice, the game lives and breathes with the beautiful map that is the game board, the atmospheric cards and player roles.

If that dash of history is not for you, it is unlikely you will enjoy Freedom. If that sort of thing is your cup of tea however, this game handles the history-part marvelously.

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#2 – The Game Components

I reviewed the game’s components in more detail in my unboxing article.

As noted there, they are a mixed bag. Some of the contents of the box are great, including the board itself, the rule book, the custom dice. All components in the box exude the designers’ love for the period and the theme.

However, there were two things I found jarring.

• First, the cards themselves, while fantastically designed, are not the linen embossed stuff that would stand up to the sort of frequent shuffling, sorting and re-shuffling required by the game. My cards starting showing signs of wear and tear as early as the first game.

• Second, among the Kickstarter-components, the wooden slave-catcher markers should be in all versions of the game. Playing on the board with both card-board tokens and wooden cubes is jarring. Good if you have the Kickstarter-version, bad if you don’t.

This isn’t a deal-breaker for me. I also know that a small Kickstarter/Web-publishing game company is not Hasbro or even Fantasy Flight Games. Still, it should be mentioned.

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#3 – The Gameplay Itself

Finally, the game itself. It is a cooperative game, which I enjoy for a change. I talked about some of the specifics in this blog-post.

It is challenging enough that I find myself itching to play again, trying to beat it “this time”, when I failed. With all the variety of cards, the different player roles and the random slave-catcher movements, it is also surprisingly varied. I have not yet played a game that felt too much like a previous game.

As great, and even slightly addicting as the basic game is, a few things could’ve been better.

• The game takes, compared to its playing time, a fair bit of work to set up. Sorting cards, removing cards not used for the specific number of player, re-shuffling cards, etc.. .

• The card-mechanism doesn’t always “flow” naturally. For example, there are several “disaster-cards” mixed into all decks, where bad things happen. However, if you draw two within a short time, you simply shuffle the second one back into the game. It feels a bit like “patching” the game, and not going with the base mechanics.

• There are a lot of details to keep track of: Player abilities, negative effects of cards, money, abilities, slave-catcher movements. By itself, none is difficult. Especially in larger games however, the sheer amount of things to track often leads to one player or another forgetting something here and there. Four different ways to raise money (tokens, cards, abilities, movement), for example, seem excessive.

Again, this is complaining on a high level. The game itself, as I said, is great fun. Nevertheless, sticking to the player aids and/or putting somebody in charge of keeping track of the many aspects of the game, especially with many players, helps.

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#4 – Thoughts?

Overall, I think this is a fantastic game, and I am happy to have it in my collection.

It is not perfect, but nonetheless a fun, challenging and varied game to play, and do so many times over. More importantly, the theme and the designers’ obvious enthusiasm for it shines through in all parts of the game, and really elevates it to a whole new level.

My one big hope is that Academy Games will offer the deck of cards for the game for sale separately at some point, so worn out copies can be replaced. With flawless components, this would’ve easily been a 5-star game  for me.

If you feel intrigued by the theme and/or the idea of a heavily historical board-game, Freedom: The Underground Railroad is definitely worth a look!

Z.